Strange Attractor

By Strange Attractor

An unscripted conversation between Johnny Noble and Lucy Butcher about sciencey stuff over a wine/s/s/s. And the occasional wasabi pea.

At least one of us stumbles home having learned something new an... more

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How many episodes does Strange Attractor have?

The podcast currently has 53 episodes available.

Strange Attractor episodes:

May 05, 2017Episode 43: A cold, yet boiling, cup of tea
What is the atmosphere?
Atmosphere of Earth (Wikipedia)
Evolution of Earth's atmosphere (Wikipedia)
Earth's early atmosphere (Universe Today)
A lecture on Earth's atmosphere (The Ohio State University)
Gaseous composition of dry air (Columbia University)
Not definitive, but a discussion around 'How is the equilibrium of 21% oxygen in Earth's atmosphere established?' (Earth Science Stack Exchange)
The first cells were anaerobic, i.e. they didn't use oxygen (Windows 2 Universe)
The great oxygenation event: The event that transformed Earth (BBC)
Geological history of oxygen (Wikipedia)
Greenhouse gases kept early Earth warm (ABC, Australia)
Stromatolites (Wikipedia)
Stromatolites: The oldest fossils (Fossil Museum)
Photosynthesis (Wikipedia)
What is the atmosphere like on other planets? (Universe Today)
Planetary atmospheres (Penn State University)
Did Mars' magnetic field die with a whimper or a bang? (Science, AAAS)
Mars’ magnetic field (Technical University of Denmark)
What keeps Earth’s atmosphere bound to Earth? (EarthSky)
Earth’s magnetic field provides vital protection (ESA)
A magnetic surprise from Venus (Astrobiology Magazine)
Core of Venus (Universe Today)
Venera 13: First colour pictures from Venus (Space.com)
Olympus Mons: The largest volcano in the solar system (BBC)
Atmosphere of Jupiter (Wikipedia)
Atmosphere of Saturn (Universe Today)
Atmospheric pressure: Definition & facts (LiveScience)
Mean sea level pressure (Wikipedia)
How does pressure change with ocean depth? (National Ocean Service)
Total Recall: The scene where he imagines his eyes pop out when his space helmet breaks (not from The Running Man) (YouTube)
How long can a human survive in outer space? (How Stuff Works, Science)
Why your blood would boil in space (BBC)
What is boiling? (Libretext Chemistry)
Steam (Wikipedia)
It's hard to get a good cup of tea on Mount Everest as water boils at a lower temperature (Dynamic Science)
How your lungs work (How Stuff Works, Health)
Positive airway pressure (Wikipedia)
Melting & boiling points of water (Wikipedia)
Earth's atmospheric layers (NASA)
Kármán line: 100 km above sea level & commonly represents the boundary between our atmosphere & outer space, also where aeronautics becomes astronautics (Wikipedia)
The Right Stuff (IMDb)
The troposphere & tropopause (Encyclopedia.com)
The heliosphere & heliopause (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
What is an aurora? (NASA)
The Earth's ionosphere (Stanford University)
Why do radio signals travel farther at night than in the day? (Gizmodo)
Ozone basics (NOAA)
Ozone depletion (Ozone Hole)
Formation of the ozone layer: "Ozone played a significant role in the evolution of life on Earth, & allows life as we presently know it to exist" (NASA, GES DISC)
"One chlorine atom can destroy over 100,000 ozone molecules before it is removed from the stratosphere" (EPA)
How to protect astronauts from space radiation on Mars (NASA)
How do we protect the astronauts from space radiation? (NASA)
'Seeing' cosmic rays in space (Universe Today)
Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
Corrections
"The solar storm of August 1972 is legendary at NASA because it occurred in between two Apollo missions: the crew of Apollo 16 had returned to Earth in April & the crew of Apollo 17 was preparing for a moon landing in December" (NASA)
This is what Johnny figured out in a Spanish toilet
How to measure the circumference of the Earth (Khan Academy)
Check out our new Fireside home
Find aaaaall the great episodes & show notes & handy instructions should you feel like leaving us a cheeky iTunes review...go on...we know you want to!
Image credit: Garðar Ólafsson photography
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58min
April 21, 2017Episode 42: That's a long time in a Spanish toilet
What is the Moon?
The Moon installation touring the UK that inspired this episode (Museum of the Moon)
Awesome simulated view of the Moon over 1 month (Wikipedia)
Why do people say the Moon is made of cheese? (Mental Floss)
Five myths about the Moon (EarthSky)
Man in the Moon (Wikipedia)
Ancient Greek astronomy (Wikipedia)
Eratosthenes measurement of the Earth's circumference (Wikipedia)
Aristarchus's 3rd-century BCE calculations on the relative sizes of the Sun, Earth & Moon (Wikipedia)
The lunar calendar (Wikipedia)
The Celtic year (Living Myths)
The death & life of the 13-month calendar (City Lab)
What causes the seasons? The Earth's tilt, which is theorised to be caused by a cosmic crash that created the Moon (NASA)
La Luna, Belinda Carlisle (YouTube)
"A moon is an object that orbits a planet or something else that is not a star. Besides planets, moons can circle dwarf planets, large asteroids, & other bodies" (National Geographic)
The Moon (Wikipedia)
Earth's moon (NASA)
Origins of 'luna' (Online Etymology Dictionary)
List of natural satellites, i.e. all the moons in our solar system (Wikipedia)
Our solar system: Moons (NASA)
Origin of the Moon (Wikipedia)
Lunar rocks & soils from Apollo missions (NASA)
What the Moon tells us about Earth (EarthSky)
The Moon does have some tectonic activity & 'moonquakes', but it's much less than on Earth (NASA)
Moonquakes (NASA)
"The tides in the oceans occur primarily because of the gravitational force of the Moon & secondarily the Sun's tidal force. Tidal forces stretch the Earth in the direction of the tide-producing body" (HyperPhysics)
Io & tidal heating: This young lady just won a science scholarship from Cards Against Humanity for this great video (YouTube)
They've found ice in permanently shadowed polar craters on the Moon, but not liquid water (SETI)
Why is the Moon so scarred with craters? (NASA)
"The South Pole-Aitken basin is a huge impact crater on the far side of the Moon. Roughly 2,500 km in diameter & 13 km deep" (Wikipedia)
Thank you Moon: GIF of the path of an asteroid's orbit that came in close contact with Earth in 2003 & will return in 2032 (9gag)
The Manicouagan crater: One of the oldest known impact craters & the largest 'visible' impact crater on Earth (Wikipedia)
A view of the Manicouagan crater from the space station (Twitter, Chris Hadfield)
Is there an atmosphere on the Moon? (NASA)
Regolith (Wikipedia)
Lunar soil (Wikipedia)
Gravitation of the Moon (Wikipedia)
"The gravitational field of the Moon has been measured through tracking the Doppler shift of radio signals emitted by orbiting spacecraft" (Wikipedia)
Does the Moon orbit the Sun or the Earth? (Wired)
Barycentre: "The center of mass of two or more bodies that are orbiting each other, or the point around which they both orbit" (Wikipedia)
Lagrange points: Parking places in space (Space.com)
Sizing up the moons of the solar system (University of Michigan, Jason Maguran)
Team solves the origin of the Moon's 'mascons' mystery (Phys.org)
What colour is the Moon? (Universe Today)
Astronomical albedo (Wikipedia)
Lunar & solar eclipses (NASA)
Why is the Moon exactly the same apparent size from Earth as the Sun? (Astronomy Magazine)
Footage of the diamond ring effect from a total solar eclipse (Business Insider, Australia)
The Sun's corona is its outer atmosphere (NASA)
The next solar & lunar eclipses (TimeAndDate)
Manned missions to the Moon: Will NASA or others return to the surface? (ABC, Australia)
Does a full moon really trigger strange behaviour? (Scientific American)
It's just a phase: The supermoon won't drive you mad (LiveScience)
Extraterrestrial real estate (Wikipedia)
"Earth's oldest, most recognised celestial real estate agency" (Lunar Land)
Origins of 'lunatic' (Online Etymology Dictionary)
The United Nations Outer Space Treaty (UN Office for Outer Space Affairs)
Notable claims by people who think they own the Moon & other exraterrestrial real estate (Wikipedia)
Geosynchronous orbits & the Bogotá Declaration of 1976 (Wikipedia)
Strange Attractor went to the Moon in 2016 for a backyard film festival 😀 (YouTube)
Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
Corrections
Do photons interact with the nucleus? Probably not unless they're from a gamma ray, they mostly interact with electrons it seems (Quora)
How does light reflect in terms of a photon hitting an atom? (Quora)
Why does light get reflected? Did the photon hit the nucleus? (Quora)
Check out our new Fireside home
Find aaaaall the great episodes & show notes & handy instructions should you feel like leaving us a cheeky iTunes review...go on...we know you want to!
Image credit: NASA
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1h 2min
April 07, 2017Episode 41: Holy Jesus look at that civilisation over there!
Are we alone in the universe?
"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying" (Arthur C. Clarke, Wikiquote)
"Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity" (Wernher von Braun, Wikiquote)
The Fermi Paradox: Where are all the aliens? (Kurzgesagt, YouTube)
The Fermi Paradox II: Solutions & ideas - Where are all the aliens? (Kurzgesagt, YouTube)
The Fermi Paradox (Wait But Why)
The difference between UK & US billions & trillions (Oxford Living Dictionaries)
What does 'life as we know it' mean? (SETI)
World's oldest fossils found in Canada, say scientists (The Guardian)
We’ve been wrong about the origins of life for 90 years (The Conversation)
Life's working definition: Does it work? (NASA)
Life (Wikipedia)
Extraterrestrial life (Wikipedia)
NASA finds evidence of a vast ancient ocean on Mars (The Guardian)
What did Mars looks like when it had water? (IFL Science)
The secret of how life on Earth began (BBC)
How did life arise on Earth? (LiveScience)
Where did life originate? There's new thinking that hydrothermal vents were important (University of California)
Has life only started once on Earth? (The Naked Scientists)
"The Moon is thought to have formed about 4.51 billion years ago, not long after Earth" (Wikipedia)
Where did the moon come from? (NASA)
Origin of the moon (Wikipedia)
Religion for the non-religious: An article about consciousness, among other things; kinda related to thinking about aliens operating on a much higher level than us (Wait But Why)
Plasma aliens could live inside “Black Clouds”: Extraterrestrial life can be stranger than we even dare to imagine (Message To Eagle)
Your lifetime by the numbers (Big Think)
100 blocks a day: An article that gets you thinking about how many times you have left to do certain things (Wait But Why)
Q (Star Trek)
NASA confirms evidence that liquid water flows on today’s Mars (NASA)
What kind of life would we find on Titan? (Phys.org)
Stephen Hawking on non-carbon-based alien life (The Daily Galaxy)
Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses how the laws of physics hold across the universe (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Is Stephen Hawking right about aliens? (The Guardian)
Humanity only has around 1,000 years left on Earth, Stephen Hawking predicts (Science Alert)
Prof. Stephen Hawking says alien life is real, warns humans not to make contact (Anonymous)
Elon Musk announces his plan to colonise Mars & save humanity (Wired)
The billion-year technology gap: Could one exist? (The Daily Galaxy)
Dark energy, dark matter (NASA)
Dark matter & dark energy (National Geographic)
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI Institute)
SETI@home: The project where SETI uses your computer when you're not (SETI)
Folding@home: The project where the protein folding people use your computer when you're not (Stanford University)
SKA telescope to generate more data than entire internet in 2020 (Computer World)
Broadcasting messages into space (SETI)
Why do you think an extraterrestrial civilisation will broadcast in the microwave part of the radio spectrum? (SETI)
SETI has tried to see if any radio signals are coming from TRAPPIST-1 (Wikipedia)
Where is the search for extraterrestrial life up to? (ABC, Australia)
Advanced alien civilisations rare or absent in the local universe (Phys.org)
How far has the first radio signal/data transmission to space travelled? (Quora)
This date in science: First intentional radio message to space (EarthSky)
What are gravitational waves? (LIGO)
What is a Dyson sphere? (EarthSky)
7 types of advanced cosmic civilisations (Big Think)
Arrival: The Movie (IMDb)
If we ever came across aliens, would we be able to understand them? (Phys.org)
If aliens contact us, we won't understand (Astronomy)
V: The TV show (IMDb)
Philosophical concepts in Star Trek: Using Star Trek as a curriculum guide introducing fans to the subject of philosophy (James Gunn's Ad Astra)
The economic lessons of Star Trek’s money-free society (Wired)
The 'no dickheads' policy (Golden Plains)
Where are Voyagers 1 & 2 right now? (NASA, JPL)
Enceladus, moon of Saturn (Wikipedia)
Tidal friction: How the moon stretches Earth & causes tides (HyperPhysics)
Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
Corrections
We were kind of vague about how cells might have evolved...here's a little more detail (University of California)
How life made the leap from single cells to multicellular animals (Wired)
Endosymbiotic theory of evolution of eukaryotic cells (University of Sydney)
Check out our new Fireside home
Find aaaaall the great episodes & show notes & handy instructions should you feel like leaving us a cheeky iTunes review...go on...we know you want to!
Image credit: NASA
...more
1h
March 24, 2017Episode 40: We saw your wobble
How do we see things in space?
TRAPPIST-1: "Presenting humanity with many opportunities to study terrestrial worlds beyond our solar system" (TRAPPIST-1)
TRAPPIST-1 (Wikipedia)
What is astronomy? (Space.com)
How do (visual) telescopes work? (How Stuff Works, Science)
Galileo Galilei (Wikipedia)
Four of Jupiter's 67 moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede & Callisto, are known as the 'Galilean' moons (Wikipedia)
Galilieo got in big trouble from the church for saying that the Earth was not the centre of everything (Wikipedia)
Galileo gives an eternal bird to the church: His middle finger is displayed in a jar in Florence (Wikipedia)
The Galilean moons have regular orbits, but most of Jupiter's moons have orbits that are a bit random (Wikipedia)
The electromagnetic spectrum (Cosmos)
The electromagnetic spectrum & telescopes (NASA)
It takes more than one kind of telescope to see the light (NASA)
Observatories across the electromagnetic spectrum (NASA)
A list of all the space telescopes (Wikipedia)
A list of the oldest observatories on Earth (Wikipedia)
How do telescopes let us see so far into space? (BBC, Science)
How scientists get data from the universe, process it, archive it & analyse it (NASA)
Hubble Space Telescope: Detects near infrared, visible & ultraviolet light (Wikipedia)
Hubble Site (NASA)
A fresh take on the Horsehead Nebula (Hubble Space Telescope, ESA)
Making images out of different kinds of raw data from space (NASA)
The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (CSIRO, Australia Telescope National Facility)
The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (Cosmos)
Main sequence stars (CSIRO, Australia Telescope National Facility)
Main sequence lifetime (Cosmos)
Detecting other worlds: The wobble method (SETI)
How can you tell between different types of stellar wobble? (The Naked Scientists)
"The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star (G2V) based on its spectral class, & is informally referred to as a yellow dwarf" (Wikipedia)
Spectra & what they can tell us (NASA)
Astronomical spectroscopy (Wikipedia)
What is a stellar nursery? (wiseGEEK)
An image of a stellar nursery (NASA)
‘Space beacons’ reveal the Milky Way’s very old core (Space Answers)
A timeline of the TRAPPIST-1 discoveries & the telescopes involved (TRAPPIST-1)
The James Webb telescope (NASA)
Kepler Space Telescope: Exoplanet hunter (Space.com)
Belgian astronomers celebrated the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanet system with Trappist beer (Wikipedia)
5 ways to find a planet (NASA)
The planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1 were discovered using the 'transit method' of detection (TRAPPIST-1)
The planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1 are quite close to the star & three are in the habitable zone (Wikipedia)
What is the Goldilocks Zone & why does it matter in the search for ET? (ABC, Australia)
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI Institute)
SETI has tried to see if any radio signals are coming from TRAPPIST-1 (Wikipedia)
Where is the search for extraterrestrial life up to? (ABC, Australia)
The billion-year technology gap: Could one exist? (The Daily Galaxy)
Advanced alien civilizations rare or absent in the local universe (Phys.org)
The hydrogen 21 cm line (HyperPhysics)
A proper paper about 21cm intensity mapping: "Using the 21 cm line, observed all‐sky & across the redshift range from 0 to 5, the large scale structure of the universe can be mapped in three dimensions" (Cornell University Library, Peterson JB et al.)
The Very Large Telescope (Wikipedia)
The Extremely Large Telescope (Wikipedia)
The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (Wikipedia)
The Deep Space Network (NASA, JPL)
Canberra has several telescopes that are part of the Deep Space Network (NASA)
The Square Kilometre Array Telescope (SKA, Australia)
SKA telescope to generate more data than entire internet in 2020 (Computer World)
SKA amazing facts (SKA)
"Astrology is the mass cultural delusion that the apparent position of the sun & planets relative to arbitrarily defined "star signs" at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality & future" (Rational Wiki)
Astrology is still bullshit & the universe doesn't care about you (Gizmodo)
Flecks of extraterrestrial dust, all over the roof: An amazing article about a Norwegian Jazz musician who collects space dust (The New York Times)
Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
Corrections
TRAPPIST-1 is thought to be an ultra-cool dwarf, not a brown dwarf (Wikipedia)
The James Webb telescope will detect infrared energy, not radio (NASA)
Johnny meant 'wavelength' when talking about the hydrogen 21 cm line, not 'frequency' (HyperPhysics)
Check out our new Fireside home
Find aaaaall the great episodes & show notes & handy instructions should you feel like leaving us a cheeky iTunes review...go on...we know you want to!
Image credit: Iván Éder
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1h 3min
March 10, 2017Episode 39: All my crimes are still on the computer
How does computer storage work?
Timeline of computer memory & storage with cool pictures (Computer History)
Computer memory (Explain That Stuff!)
Random-access memory, or RAM (Wikipedia)
How RAM works (How Stuff Works, Tech)
Read-only memory, or ROM (Wikipedia)
How ROM works (How Stuff Works, Tech)
How does a hard drive work? (Explain That Stuff!)
Non-volatile memory (Wikipedia)
What is the difference between volatile & non-volatile memory? (Reference)
Computer data storage (Wikipedia)
Punched cards (Wikipedia)
What is a Turing machine? (University of Cambridge)
IBM’s role in the holocaust: What the new documents reveal (The Huffington Post)
Magnetic tape (Computer History)
Magnetic tape for data storage: An enduring technology (IEEE)
Loading retrogames on tape on C64 (YouTube)
Johnny's first computer: The Sinclair Spectrum ZX (Wikipedia)
A Sinclair ZX Spectrum loading a game (YouTube)
How floppy disc drives work (How Stuff Works, Tech)
Optical disc (Wikipedia)
CDs & DVDs (Explain That Stuff!)
More data storage? Here’s how to fit 1,000 terabytes on a DVD (The Conversation)
The difference between hard & soft copy (Difference Between)
Hard disc drive failure (Wikipedia)
Photo of a hard drive 'head crash' (Wikipedia)
How long do hard drives actually live for? (Extreme Tech)
'Flying height': "The distance between the disc read/write head on a hard disc drive & the platter" (Wikipedia)
What does it mean when a hard disc has a head crash? (How Stuff Works, Tech)
A hard drive head crashing (YouTube)
A hard disc drive head parking (YouTube)
When should you properly 'eject' your thumb drive? (How-To Geek)
'Active hard-drive protection': Features that help if you drop your laptop (Wikipedia)
What is fragmentation & defragmentation? (lifewire)
What is 'defragging' & do I need to do it to my computer? (LifeHacker)
How is RAM made & why does the price fluctuate? (Make Use Of)
How does a central processing unit (CPU) work? (How Stuff Works, Tech)
Paging (Wikipedia)
What is memory paging? (TechTarget)
Physical computer memory & virtual memory (Science Encyclopedia)
How does flash memory work? (Explain That Stuff!)
USB flash drive (Wikipedia)
Photo of RAM chips (Wikipedia)
Hard disc drive versus solid state drive: What’s the diff? (BackBlaze)
Solid-state drive, or SSD (Wikipedia)
Are RAM drives faster than SSDs? 5 things you must know (Make Use Of)
Why deleted files can be recovered & how you can prevent it (How-To Geek)
How to wipe a hard drive (lifewire)
Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
Corrections
iPhone hard drives are encrypted, but always wipe it before selling (Darth Null)
Check out our new Fireside home
Find aaaaall the great episodes & show notes & handy instructions should you feel like leaving us a cheeky iTunes review...go on...we know you want to!
...more
1h 3min
February 24, 2017Episode 38: The faster you go, the fatter you get
What is relativity?
Einstein's theory of special relativity came first, in 1905 (Wikipedia)
How special relativity works (How Stuff Works, Science)
Einstein's theory of general relativity came second, in 1915 (Wikipedia)
Einstein's theory of general relativity (Space.com)
Einstein's theory of general relativity (TedEd)
8 ways you can see Einstein's theory of relativity in real life (LiveScience)
"Do yourself a favour & read Einstein's paper on special relativity" (io9)
Einstein's theory of relativity made easy (YouTube)
Theory of relativity explained in 7 minutes (YouTube)
Albert Einstein's theory of relativity (YouTube)
The 'Annus Mirabilis' or 'Extraordinary Year' papers: Einstein's first 4 papers published in the Annalen der Physik (Wikipedia)
Einstein's original special relativity paper as it was published (Universität Wien)
English translation of Einstein's original special relativity paper (Fourmilab)
Albert Einstein (Time)
Speed of light & the principle of relativity (The Physics of the Universe)
The real meaning of E=mc2 (YouTube)
The luminiferous aether: What they thought light travelled on before relativity (Wikipedia)
The Michelson-Morely experiment (Wikipedia)
Time dilation (How Stuff Works, Science)
Length contraction (How Stuff Works, Science)
Time dilation & length contraction (Hyperphysics)
Discover the Ladder Paradox, relativity's greatest thought experiment (io9)
Here's why astronauts age slower than the rest of us here on Earth (Business Insider)
Relativity of simultaneity: Mentions the thought experiment where you can't say for sure that a crash in London & New York happens at the same time (Wikipedia)
The 'light cone' diagram (Wikipedia)
GPS & relativity (Ohio State University, Prof. Richard Pogge)
GPS was launched by the US Government in 1973 & they still own it! (Wikipedia)
The official US GPS website (gps.gov)
Why do objects increase in mass as they get faster? (Futurism)
Photons are massless & must move at the speed of light according to relativity (Wikipedia)
What if you travelled faster than the speed of light? (How Stuff Works, Science)
Neutrino 'faster than light' scientist resigns (BBC)
What is gravity? (Qualitative Reasoning Group)
What is gravity really? (NASA)
Brian Cox visits the world's biggest vaccuum chamber to drop a bowling ball & a feather in anti-gravity conditions (YouTube)
Gravitational time dilation (Wikipedia)
David 'Avocado' Wolfe: The guy who thinks gravity is a toxin (Rational Wiki)
The 200-year-old mystery of Mercury's orbit — solved! (io9)
Vulcan, the hypothetical planet (Wikipedia)
If you feel like a belly laugh, check out this discussion about why Vulcan exists, some people even claim to have seen it! (The Flat Earth Society)
Planet 9 (Wikipedia)
Help astronomers look for planet 9 (EarthSky)
What is gravitational lensing? (Phys.org)
Unification of gravity (Hyperphysics)
Einstein’s folly: How the search for a unified theory stumped him to his dying day (The Conversation)
Here's what would happen if the sun disappeared right now (Business Insider)
"Men of science more or less agog at results of eclipse observations": How the solar eclipse of 1919 changed our understanding of the universe forever (Starts With a Bang)
Astronomers watch a supernova & see re-runs (The New York Times)
Gravitational lensing, including some cool pics (Wikipedia)
Dark energy, dark matter (NASA)
Cosmological redshift (Cosmos)
Gravitational redshift (Wikipedia)
What are gravitational waves? (LIGO)
Gravity Probe B (NASA)
What does mercury being liquid at room temperature have to do with Einstein's theory of relativity? (Scientific American)
Relativity & why gold is golden (Wikipedia)
What gives gold that mellow golden glow? (Fourmilab)
Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
Check out our new Fireside home
Find aaaaall the great episodes & show notes & handy instructions should you feel like leaving us a cheeky iTunes review...go on...we know you want to!
...more
1h 2min
February 10, 2017Episode 37: Don't steal meat
What are wearables & RFIDs?
Wearables 101: What they are & why you’ll be seeing a lot of them (How-To Geek)
Wearable technology (Wikipedia)
The wear, why & how (The Economist)
Gamification (Wikipedia)
The Apple Watch, Series 2 (Apple)
How the Apple Watch works (How Stuff Works, Tech)
FitBit
How FitBit works (How Stuff Works, Tech)
How does a pedometer work? (Explain That Stuff!)
Pedometer take-apart (Evil Mad Scientist)
What is a mercury switch? (wiseGEEK)
Mercury switch (Wikipedia)
How the (Nintendo) Wii works (How Stuff Works, Tech)
What are accelerometers & how do they work? (Explain That Stuff!)
Flight Radar 24: An app that uses the accelerometer in your phone (flightradar24)
Apple Watch heart rate sensor: Everything you need to know (Tech Radar)
A discussion about how the Apple Watch knows if you're standing or sitting...not sure if anyone really understands (Quora)
How to use a trundle wheel (NSW Department of Education)
Blindside Margaret River Classic White 2016 (Naked Wines)
Google Glass (Google)
Google Glass (Wikipedia)
Snapchat Spectacles (Snapchat)
We tried Snapchat Spectacles - here's what it's like (c|net)
Smart ring (Wikipedia)
Ingestibles, wearables & embeddables (Federal Communications Commission)
How does your chip credit card work? It uses 'EMV', the technical standard for smart payment cards (Wikipedia)
Radio-frequency identification, or RFID (Wikipedia)
Radio frequency (RF & RFID) tags (Explain That Stuff!)
RFID FAQ (RFID Journal)
RFID tag tuning (Atmel)
Apple's fight with Aussie banks over Apple Pay & iPhone NFC rages on (Gizmodo)
Apple Pay explained: What is it & how does it work? (Pocket-lint)
How Apple Pay & Google Wallet actually work (ars TECHNICA)
How do antennas & transmitters work? (Explain That Stuff!)
How anti-shoplifting devices work (How Stuff Works, Science)
Samsung reveals 'Family Hub' fridge that orders food, plays films & lets you see inside it remotely (Daily Mail)
The 'Amazon Go' shop in Seattle that doesn't have checkouts (Amazon)
There's a smartphone-powered store in Sweden with no human cashiers (Gizmodo)
Electromagnetic activation & deactivation of security tags (Wikipedia)
How much does it cost to find a Higgs Boson? The cost of the Large Hadron Collider (Forbes)
The cost of Melbourne's MYKI transport system (The Age)
RFID handshake (All Things Sensory)
UUIDs & GUIDs (Wikipedia)
Online GUID Generator
7 gadgets to keep track of the things that matter most to you (Tech Radar)
The 'tile' tracker's battery lasts about 1 year & then they help you recycle & replace the entire device (tile)
How wireless mesh networks work (How Stuff Works, Tech)
Mesh networking (Wikipedia)
These wearables are designed to help people with Alzheimer's (Forbes)
NHS dementia patients to trial wearable technology (BBH)
What is the future of fabric? These smart textiles will blow your mind (Forbes)
Clothes with hidden sensors act as an always-on doctor (New Scientist)
Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
Check out our new Fireside home
Find aaaaall the great episodes & show notes & handy instructions should you feel like leaving us a cheeky iTunes review...go on...we know you want to!
Vote for us
Vote for us in the people's choice section of the Castaway Australian Podcast Awards :)
...more
1h 8min
January 27, 2017Episode 36: You put a cat in a box
What is quantum physics?
Quantum mechanics 101: Demystifying tough physics in 4 easy lessons (TEDed)
Quantum physics for 7 year olds: Dominic Walliman TED talk (YouTube)
6 things everyone should know about quantum physics (Forbes)
What is quantum mechanics good for? (Scientific American)
What has quantum mechanics ever done for us? (Forbes)
Quantum mechanics (Wikipedia)
The map of physics: Dominic Walliman animation (YouTube)
Classical mechanics vs quantum mechanics (Cambridge University Press)
Newton's laws of motion, the foundation of classical mechanics, break down at the very small scales addressed by quantum mechanics & at the very high speeds addressed by relativistic mechanics (livescience)
Kepler's laws of planetary motion...apparently he didn't even have a telescope to figure them out! (HyperPhysics)
"Kepler’s laws apply not only to gravitational but also to all other inverse-square-law forces &, if due allowance is made for relativistic & quantum effects, to the electromagnetic forces within the atom" (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
What is black body radiation? "Radiation modes in a hot cavity provide a test for quantum theory" (HyperPhysics)
Quantum theory timeline (Particle Physics Timeline)
Max Planck solves the black body radiation problem (Fermilab)
What is a photon? (Wikipedia)
The wave-particle duality of light & elementary particles...mental (HyperPhysics)
Explainer: What is wave-particle duality? (The Conversation)
Richard Feynman on understanding quantum mechanics (YouTube)
Neils Bohr: "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it" (Wikiquote)
Richard Feynman: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics" (Wikiquote)
The observer effect: When you look at something, you change it (Wikipedia)
Schrödinger's cat explained (YouTube)
What superposition? (Phys.org)
Quantum decoherence (Wikipedia)
What is decoherence? (Drexel University)
What is the multiverse? (Wikipedia)
The theory of parallel universes is not just maths - it is science that can be tested (The Conversation)
What the hell is spin? (io9)
Do quantum effects make our choices our own? (Storify)
'Quarantine' by Greg Egan was the book Johnny was thinking about, not 'Diaspora' (which is also excellent)
The basics of MRI: Electron spin is involved (Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science)
Debating that if we didn't understand quantum mechanics we wouldn't have computers (Physics Stack Exchange)
How does a computer chip work? (SciTech, CERN)
Making silicon chips (Intel)
What is a transistor? (Wikipedia)
What is quantum tunnelling? (Wikipedia)
The tunnelling transistor (IEEE Spectrum)
The 5 nm node in transistors was once thought to be the end of Moore's law - "transistors smaller than 7 nm will experience quantum tunnelling through their logic gates" (Wikipedia)
What is Moore's law? (Wikipedia)
IBM beat Intel & currently have the world's smallest transistor at 7 nm (The Verge)
The best thing about IBM’s super chip? It’s not from Intel (Wired)
The world's smallest transistor is 1nm long, physics be damned (The Verge)
What is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle? (The Guardian)
The uncertainty principle (HyperPhysics)
Walter White from Breaking Bad named himself after Heisenberg (Wikipedia)
The one-electron universe theory (Wikipedia)
Quantum quackery (The Committee for Skeptical Enquiry)
The 5 most misguided uses of the word 'quantum' in ads (Cracked)
The Quantum Leap TV show (IMDb)
"The laser would never have been developed without a profound understanding of an area of fundamental physics - quantum theory" (Institute of Physics)
The Pauli exclusion principle (HyperPhysics)
Entanglement made simple (Quanta Magazine)
What is quantum cryptography? (Wikipedia)
Google moves closer to a universal quantum computer (Scientific American)
Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
Corrections
Re: the orbit of Mercury puzzle...Johnny was thinking about proof of relativity not quantum stuff (io9)
There is debate about whether the Pauli exclusion principle implies an effect on all particles in the universe at once (Sean Carroll, Cal Tech physicist)
Check out our new Fireside home
Find aaaaall the great episodes & show notes & handy instructions should you feel like leaving us a cheeky iTunes review...go on...we know you want to!
Vote for us
Vote for us in the people's choice section of the Castaway Australian Podcast Awards :)
...more
1h 2min
January 13, 2017Episode 35: Before chicken
What is time & why does it move forward? (The Conversation)
What is time? (Wikipedia)
A debate over the physics of time (Quanta Magazine)
Check if the time on your devices matches 'atomic time' anywhere on Earth (Time.is)
Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes, yet there are only 24 hours in a day? (Scientific American)
A year is the orbital period of the Earth moving in its orbit around the Sun (Wikipedia)
The period of time during which the Earth completes one rotation with respect to the Sun is called a solar day (Wikipedia)
Length of a day & a year on Mars (NASA)
Timekeeping on Mars (Wikipedia)
The 'stardate' system: How they track time on Star Trek (Wikipedia)
How do Star Trek stardates work? (Mental Floss)
A discussion on how the Federation sets its clocks on Star Trek (StackExchange, SciFi)
What is the arrow of time? (Wikipedia)
Where does our arrow of time come from? (Forbes)
Travelling forwards through time is possible, Einstein said so (Physics.org)
The 'twin paradox' involves identical twins - one travels into space in a high-speed rocket (Sven) & returns home to find that the twin who stayed on Earth has aged more (Geoffrey) (Wikipedia)
Does light experience time? (Phys.org)
Interstellar (IMDb)
Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how gravity affects time (YouTube)
Theory claims that time is not the 4th dimension (The Daily Galaxy)
The 'jiffy': The duration light takes to travel one fermi (10−15 m, about the size of a nucleon) in a vacuum (Wikipedia)
The origins of calendars (Wikipedia)
The Gregorian calendar is the international standard, but there are many national calendars in use (Wikipedia)
Is it time to overhaul the calendar? (Scientific American)
Proposals for replacement calendars (Wikipedia)
Cool animation - 'A new history for humanity': Proposes adding 10,000 years to the date so it's the year 12,017 (Kurzgesagt, YouTube)
How do we know what year it is? (Redditt)
Year zero (Wikipedia)
'Precision time protocol' is used to synchronise clocks throughout a computer network (Wikipedia)
1 January, 1970: When Unix time/Epoch time began for computers (Wikipedia)
Convert regular time to Epoch time (Epoch Converter)
Set your iPhone's date to January 1, 1970 & you'll kill it (Sydney Morning Herald)
Remember Y2K? (Time)
What are the main problems with the Y2K computer crisis & how are people trying to solve them? (Scientific American)
How quartz clocks & watches work (Explain That Stuff!)
What is quartz? (Geology.com)
Caesium atomic clocks & the definition of a second (HyperPhysics)
How does one arrive at the exact number of cycles of radiation a caesium-133 atom makes in order to define one second? (Scientific American)
Every now and then we have to insert a leap second because the Earth’s rotation is slowing down. Could we speed up Earth’s rotation, so that we do not need leap seconds? (xkcd)
What is a leap second? (Wikipedia)
What is a leap year? (Wikipedia)
Neil deGrasse Tyson explains leap years (YouTube)
Measure the tilt of the Earth on the solstice with a stick (Starts With a Bang!)
All about the solstice-s (EarthSky)
Clock drift: When a clock gradually desynchronises from another clock (Wikipedia)
Why do we have different time zones? (Wonderopolis)
Why do we have time zones? (timeanddate.com)
China has only one time zone & that's a problem (The Atlantic)
Convert your time to Beijing time (worldtimebuddy)
Australian times zones - Eucla in WA has its own! (timeanddate.com)
Integer overflow: When a number is too large for available storage (Wikipedia)
FAA warning all airlines to reboot Dreamliners regularly (International Business Times)
How to convert between date & Unix/Epoch time in Excel (Extend Office)
Gene name errors can be introduced inadvertently when using Excel in bioinformatics (BMC Bioinformatics)
The hidden 'Easter egg' flight simulator in Excel 97 (YouTube)
List of hidden 'Easter eggs' in Microsoft products (Wikipedia)
Differences between the 1900 & the 1904 date system in Excel (Microsoft)
Where are you from? Send us a postcard! Strange Attractor, c/ PO Box 9, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia
Check out our new Fireside home!
Find aaaaall the great episodes & show notes & handy instructions should you feel like leaving us a cheeky iTunes review...go on...we know you want to!
Vote for us!
Vote for us in the people's choice section of the Castaway Australian Podcast Awards :)
...more
1h
December 30, 2016 Episode 34: We're moving!
We're moving!
Hi. Johnny here.
I'm just about to move Strange Attractor across to a different podcast hosting platform. Say what? Doesn't matter. Here's all you need to know:
You shouldn't notice
And if you did, that means I messed up. I'm sorry. This stuff can be fairly complicated.
If you don't see episode 35 on the 13th January...
...just delete the podcast from your player and re-subscribe. That should fix it up.
Any questions?
Tweet me @johnnynoble any time.
If you see this header, it's worked!
This text only appears on our new host.
...more
1min

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The podcast currently has 53 episodes available.